Wordpress as a CMS - Content Management System
Written by Tara: Freelance Designer on Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 8:08 am
I have been intending writing a bit about using Wordpress as a CMS for a while now. This post is made up of several parts -
1. Website examples of word of Wordpress being used as a CMS
As many of you probably know as well as being used as a blog Wordpress can also be used as a CMS or if you didn’t know here are a few examples of sites that use it. (Found via www.codex.wordpress.org). Click on any example to go to the sites.
2. My endeavours as a beginner to use Wordpress as a CMS
I have been experimenting with Wordpress as a content management system myself, all be it by adapting an existing template as my coding skills are still not very strong (so please be gentle with me).
My experiments have been on a site I wanted to create for my characters designs The Weather Pops. I was looking to create a simple website fairly quickly as I am attending the brand licensing show in October.
After searching for a suitable theme to start with I settled on the Blixed Wordpress Theme for its simplicity and the fact that the pages did not have a side bar, as I only wanted header navigation on my main pages. I tweaked the CSS on the pages so that the width of the content was the same width as the header.
The newer versions of Wordpress give you the ability to create a Static home page, ideal if you want to use Wordpress as a CMS. You can set this in your admin panel under OPTIONS - READING
What I was really looking for though was something that would allow me to specify both a static front page and a blog page as I wanted my website to function as a website first, with a secondary blog. I found a plugin which allowed me to do this called Filosofo Home-Page Control which allowed me to set both a home page and a “virtual” location for my blog. If you look at www.theweatherpops.com/blog it appears that the blog aspect of the site is in a blog folder, when in fact it isn’t, it is just part of the rest of the site.
The website is very basic but it gave me a taste of what could be done with Wordpress.
3. Using Wordpress as a CMS by Jennifer Farley from Laughing Lion Design
www.laughingliondesign.net
Jennifer is an experienced web and graphic designer and also a design instructor. Make sure you take a look at her blog for loads of photoshop tutorials. Jennifer’s Laughing Lion Design website also uses Wordpress as a CMS
I took my first tentative steps from using Blogger to Wordpress (WP) as my blogging platform about 8 or 9 months ago. Initially my plans were to use WP solely for blogging. I had read quite a bit about it and lots of the blogs I was visiting seemed to be using it so I decided to give it a go. Within a very short period of using WP I realised that it offered so much more than just making it easy to publish a blog.
So what else can you do with this baby?
It is possible to use WP as a complete Content Management System (CMS). Not only can you write and edit posts easily, you can also write, edit and add PAGES easily and for me that’s what makes it so great. This means that you can set up the design or look and feel of your site and continue to add as many web pages to your site as you need, when you need them. No more pleading with clients to REALLY think about each section they need before you start designing, if they forget something you can add it in later with little or no problems. Many people believe that they must have the blog posts on the front of their website if using WP but the fact is you can set any static page as your home page and have your blog “inside” the main site.
Another factor which makes WP a joy to work with is the number of superb plugins that are available. WP is an Open Source application which means it has been developed by a community of people who are genuinely interested in creating good quality, FREE applications. Plugins could be considered smaller, “helper” applications that plug in to WP and give extra functionality to your site. To find out more about the type of plugins available check out - www.codex.wordpress.org/plugins
So let’s take a look at a couple of examples of where you could use WP to manage different types of website.
a. News or Magazine Site
WP lends itself very well to this type of site. Feature articles can be kept on the front page with latest news listed chronologically on another part of the page. You could also set up different category pages such as Fashion or Sport. To see a WP theme using this style, check out Gridlock at www.hyalineskies.com
b. Gallery Site
As well as displaying images, gallery sites sometimes allow commenting (no problem for WP) and rating of individual items or lists of top rated items. This sort of application can be put together using WP with the WPG2 plugin - www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpg2/ which allows random, recent, daily, weekly, popular images, and albums to be displayed as image blocks in the Wordpress Sidebar.
c. Portfolio Site
Very similar to a gallery site, the portfolio site usually consists of one or more pages of thumbnails which when clicked allow the visitor to see a larger version of the work. You could of course include the WPG2 plugin to allow rating, but if you’d rather just show your work without them, a wonderful plugin that you can use is NextGen. This is a plugin I have used for many of my clients and I cannot tell you what a time saver it is compared to the old method of individually resizing thumbs and then linking them up. Great stuff.
d. E-Commerce Site
These days, it’s very important to be able to add some sort of E-commerce functionality to a site. Everyone has something to sell, don’t they? This type of site is generally made up of product page with descriptions and thumbnails. Also required is integration with some type of payment service. I use Paypal as the payment service for my clients because it really is simple to setup. But what about the E-commerce functionality? How does that tie in with WP? Well needless to say there is a plugin available …
The imaginatively titled “WP E-commerce” plugin is available for download from www.instinct.co.nz It’s one I’ve used on two client sites without too many hassles. The main problem I came across with this was the particular themes I had designed didn’t quite sit right with some of the product pages, but that was my fault rather than the plugin.
So that’s a short round up of just some of the ways you can take your WP blog and turn it into a fully fledged CMS with tons of functionality. You’ll find there are plugins for all kinds of things, the ones I listed above are some that I like and use for my own and my client sites, there are many more out there to play with.
4. A series of links about using Wordpress as a content management system and useful Wordpress Plugins
Semiologic
Semiologic is a Wordpress theme that has been designed so it can be used to build a website rather than just a blog - ie. act as a content management system. I downloaded it put it on a test site to experiment. It basically contains a series of wizards and set up features that you can activate without any coding knowledge. There are a lot of layout variations you can choose from - 1 column, 2 column, 3 column and you can choose the width of your website as well, there are a few skins build in too. What I though looked pretty good was how easily you could duplicate the skin and create/amend it to adapt to your own liking if you had a bit of CSS knowledge. Using widgets you can drag and drop what you have in the sidebar too. (if you choose to have a sidebar)
This article from Blaze Media talks you through 5 Wordpress Plugins which make it easier to use Wordpress as a Content Management system
Charity at Design adaptations gives a step by step guide to creating template pages in Wordpress -
“One of the ways I use Wordpress as a CMS is by way of custom templates. The kind of pages which can be added using template files that you define are virtually limitless. Say you want to showcase your Portfolio. You might need a layout vastly different from your default pages.” Charity has several other articles about using Wordpress including Configure Wordpress as a CMS.
David Peralty at Blogging Pro shares his 5 reasons that Wordpress should be used as a CMS.
A plugin from Instinct.co.nz which brings ecommerce to Wordpress. (as mentioned above by Jennifer)
J David Macor gives a step by step guide on how to get Wordpress running locally on a PC, ideal if you want to test your Wordpress website before releasing it publicly.
Michael Doig gives a step by step guide on how to get Wordpress running locally on a Mac, again ideal if you want to test your Wordpress website before releasing it publicly.
Blog helper has several different articles about using Wordpress as a CMS including how to use Wordpress to create a portfolio site
Brian Gardner has created a premium Wordpress theme called Revolution - a magazine style CMS theme.
This article from pqdb.com gives more information about working with categories, adding a FAQ page, a contact form and making sure the whole Wordpress website is searchable.
The Sandbox theme at Plaintxt.org is a very minimalistic theme ready to be styled in any way you wish. If you are looking for a fairly blank canvas to start your Wordpress CMS website and know a bit about CSS it could be a place to start.
David at David Airey has an article on how to customise your Wordpress Login page. This could be useful if you are using Wordpress to build a CMS website for one of your clients and want the login page to fit in with their corporate look.
Randa at Randa Clay Design discusses how she worked out how to rearrange wordpress navigation and hide elements she did not want to appear.
Char at Essential Keystrokes talks you through how she made a website using Wordpress as a Content Management System.
This article by John McCreesh at Onlamp.com can show you how to create a static home page if you are using an older version of Wordpress.
An article by Jonathan on how to put together a Wordpress Theme from scratch.
If any body else knows of any useful articles/plugins for using Wordpress as a CMS please let me know and I will add them to the list.
Category: Tutorials, Web Design, Blogging
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Comment by Sanjeev Sharma
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 8:25 am
Tara, Thanks a million for putting this post together… it’s a great help for someone like me, who’s been trying to do just this, but without much success 
Thanks once again!
Cheers,
Sanjeev
Comment by Ben Seven
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 11:31 am
Fantastic work - I’ve dabbled with wordpress as a CMS before without much success - and all the resources you’ve rounded up will be very useful too!
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 11:33 am
Hi Sanjeev and Ben, thanks I hope its helpful
Comment by James
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 1:19 pm
The one problem I have with Wordpress is that it is a resource hog. The hit your SQL database takes is amazing. I’ve been using WP for a few years now and my site has gone “down” more than a few times with heavy traffic - losing its database connection. I finally figured out what it was after searching for hours in various WP-related forums.
I’m considering a switch to Drupal as it is more robust and much more configurable. The only problem with Drupal is that it is much more difficult to work with and I need help from a friend to get it up and running.
In any case, nice post. Thanks for all the links!
Comment by Chris Coyier
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 4:31 pm
Great post! I think WordPress makes a very capable Content Management System. That’s what it basically is out-of-the-box. It’s just how you skin it that makes it feel more CMS-y than Bloggy. That’s what I’ve tried to do on Reader Help, a site intended to be search-focused, so people could search for error codes and problems with Adobe Reader. This really doesn’t need to be a “blog”, so I just reskinned it more like a CMS.
Comment by Char
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 4:51 pm
Tara - fantastic round up of resources for using WP as a CMS. I have a feeling I will be checking them all out as I expect to be doing more of this as time goes on.
Regarding WP as a resource hog - most of the sites I would use WP for when designing a CMS are not the kind of sites going after Digg levels of traffic or anything of the sort. I would like to use it more to give clients the ability to make easy text changes rather than spending my days doing site maintenance.
Comment by The Happy Rock
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 5:03 pm
Very interesting, thanks for the insight. I really like the wordpress platform and have espoused it benefits to a couple of friends. This will be a good resource for the flexibility that you can get using wordpress. Your WeatherPops site works really well, and you would never know it was a wordpress site.
PS - The Andy Roddick link isn’t working.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 5:22 pm
Hi James, I have noticed my database is hogged a bit by Wordpress, but like Char said a lot of websites are not necessarily going to have big traffic levels or have new content added quite so much as blogs. I would be interested to hear how you get on with Drupal, I dabbled but it went a bit over my head.
Hi Chris, thanks for example of what you have done with Wordpress
Hi Char, thanks I would be interested in seeing any new sites you do with Wordpress, maybe you could do an update on your previous posts, when you have produced more sites?
Hi The Happy Rock
Thanks for the feed back - and I fixed the link - thanks for letting me know.
Comment by Randa Clay
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 6:13 pm
Really thorough article Tara - nice work. I enjoyed visiting your cute Weather Pops site. I’m going to have to check out the Semiologic theme. Thanks for the mention too!
Comment by tray
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 6:31 pm
i love it! i’m glad i’m not the only wordpress-as-a-CMS freak out there. 
most of this i knew.. but it’s nice to have all this information in one spot. *bookmarks*
Comment by Ozh
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 7:53 pm
“Wordpress as a CMS” sounds to me just about silly as “Firefox as a web browser”. Wordpress *IS* a CMS, damnit. You post text, image, files, whatever, and manage them. You manage content. How the f* can Wordpress NOT be a CMS ??? Seriously, I don’t get it.
Comment by The Happy Rock
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 7:59 pm
@ozh - I think people agree that it fits the definiton of a CMS, but the problem is that people think of it as just blog software. Most people aren’t willing to use create a ‘real’ site, or don’t no how to use the platform to accomplish what they want. Just my two cents.
Comment by tray
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 8:04 pm
@ozh technically wordpress was written as a blogging software, not a CMS. yes, a blog is technically “content” but it’s not considered the same as a content management system. and why isn’t it? i think it’s mainly just a language/definition issue. heck.. technically a file cabinet is a “content management system” but if you say “i’d like to buy that black CMS” they’d probably look at you funny in the store.
Comment by johno
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 9:03 pm
What a wonderful post. I’ve been thinking about this topic for some time, so it’s great now to have all the resources I need to really look seriously as using WP for a CMS. That Semiologic looks particularly interesting. You’ve obviously put a lot of work into this post. Thanks!
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Comment by johno
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 9:19 pm
Sorry to double post, but I must answer Ozh:
Rather than confuse things and argue semantics, let’s just say that WordPress is not a CMS. It can be used as one with a little tweaking, but it is not designed as one, and neither is it promoted as a CMS solution. It is a blogging solution that can be bent into working as a simple CMS. If you were to compare WP with those products that are actually labelled as CMS, then you’d see the difference.
Your analogy is seriously flawed; I compile images, text and files with my mail client. However, my mail client is not a CMS.
If WP were a CMS, then we wouldn’t need posts like these; however, it’s not designed as a CMS, so the resources and pointers above can aid us in getting this wonderful blogging platform to mimic some of the functions of existing CMSs.
Comment by Ozh
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 10:28 pm
Let me sum the article up:
1) Wordpress is not a CMS
2) but if you install some plugins, a new theme, change the default home page, write pages, wow, it is a CMS!
Which basically means:
1) Wordpress is not a CMS
2) but if you do just what it was intended for, it’s a CMS!
It’s like saying: Firefox is not a web browser. But hey! if you add a modem and an internet connection, it’s a web browser!!
Comment by Louisa Nicholson
Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 11:20 pm
Comment by Huhi
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 3:01 am
Great post. Very well organized, nice job.
WP is a very sad CMS, though. You can get what you want eventually, but it’s in the most inelegant and dated way possible. I just decided to leave WP in my professional life and stop submitting patches. The admin API is a joke. The dev team is stubborn and in love with a system that needs a major overhaul. The dev cycle itself is broken. Scores of patches and enhancements that are COMPLETED never see the light of day.
I’m hoping the MovableType guys scare the quality back into WP. They seem to be moving toward a much more modular approach.
Comment by awflasher
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 3:42 am
However, I think WordPress is just WordPress, though I love it so much, it’s not a born CMS.
I love your amazing post, but I don’t think I will do so, there are so many reasons
Comment by Mark Penix
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 7:46 am
Very nice round up Tara! It’s great seeing some real flexibility with WordPress… and even more amazing that some high profile companies are using the platform.
I especially enjoyed the Ford site… very nice indeed. And your experiment with The Weather Pops is really cute.
Comment by abhi
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 8:17 am
a beautiful and very helpful article. even though there are many plugins out there, hearing from someone who has actually used them is worth a lot. thanks!
Comment by reese
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 8:45 am
The timing of this article is perfect; just what I needed.
I tend to use other CMS systems but am looking into leveraging WP in this way. Your examples were helpful and turned what was an otherwise-daunting task into something more manageable.
My one complaint is something similar to what Huhi noted: it seems to take quite a bit of wrangling to turn WP into a CMS, whereas other CMS’ offer more ‘out of the box’ solutions to the issues such as differing templates, custom field management, etc.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 8:49 am
Hi Everyone, it seems while I have been sleeping the “is Wordpress a CMS or not” has stirred up a bit of a debate
I will have to leave that to you decide. If you do intend experimenting with Wordpress I hope the links will help
My thanks to Jennifer who put a lot of work into her piece sbout all the Wordpress plugins she used. I had been curious to hear if the Ecommerce plugin worked and now I know someone who has tried it successfully.
Comment by indobloger
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 9:20 am
Wordpress is a blog platform. I use it for my blog. For CMS, I use Joomla.
Comment by webtuga
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 9:23 am
You just need to have a portal theme working at a blog engine.
Wordpress do that, and you can do the portal theme.
Comment by Susan
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 11:35 am
Hi,
A friend just gave me a link to your site. Very good stuff! I just created my very first Wordpress theme and I’m using it as a CMS. I’m pleased with how it’s going so far. I have used the WP Commerce plugin for one other site and it works nicely. My only question at this point is…how can I have the WP Commerce stuff only show on a specific page instead of the whole WP site? I’ll have to work on that one a bit.
I can’t wait to look through all the stuff you have here! And I love The Weather Pops! Cute!
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 11:57 am
Hi Indobloger - thanks for your comment, I have dabbled with Joomla but found it quite complex.
Hi Webtuga - thanks for yourr comment, which portal themes do yuu recommend?
Hi Susan
Thanks for visiting. I have never used the ecommerce plugin but maybe someone else here can do.
Thanks for your comment on The Weather Pops
Comment by Jennifer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 12:57 pm
Thanks Tara. Teamwork! Maybe we can work together on another article in the future.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 1:01 pm
That sounds good Jennifer
Comment by Tesss
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 3:23 pm
Hi Tara,
thanks for your comment a while ago, I’m a bit busy lately and didn’t have much time to leave a comment, had a peek instead. I noticed theweatherpops.com and had a look at the website, awesome!!! They look adorable on the children’s clothes. Good luck 2nd/3rd of October. I had a quick chat with my friend but no results just yet… sorry…
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 3:32 pm
Hi Tess
Thanks, I’m glad you like the Weather Pops site - and thanks for asking your friend too, much appreciated.
Comment by Len
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 3:36 pm
Great post, and I love the weather pops! Just wanted to let you know that on the weather pops bio page, storm is listed as being able to create “lightening” when you probably meant “lightning.” All the best!
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 3:51 pm
Cheers Len, spelling was never my strong point 
Comment by Jonathan
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 5:11 pm
There was an excellent list on BloggingBits.com a few days ago on the topic of “WordPress Theme Creation” - I was going to drop a link to it, but the site is temporarily down.
For those looking to travel the DIY route with using WordPress as a CMS, knowing how to easily put together a WordPress theme could come in handy.
You’re welcome to share my humble tutorial on the subject and I’d encourage you to put together a quick list of some of the excellent other tutorials as well. You can take a look at mine at:
http://jonathanwold.com/tutorials/wordpress_theme/
It’s exciting to watch the WordPress platform grow :).
Thanks for the excellent post Tara and keep up the good work!
-Jonathan
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 5:49 pm
Hi Jonathan, I will have to remember to take a look at BloggingBits.com, and thanks for your link, I have added it into the post.
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Comment by Rose
Made Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 11:03 pm
I have to agree with James there. Great article though.
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Comment by Tracey Grady
Made Saturday, 8 of September , 2007 at 4:26 am
Thanks Tara for a great article, it’s something I could have done with two weeks ago! I have set up a Wordpress blog site before and was searching recently for resources on utilising Wordpress for CMS purposes, but I wasn’t satisfied with much of the information I found at the time. I have started looking into using Textpattern to build CMS sites because it allows you to incorporate your own CSS the way you’ve coded it. But I’m still very interested in Wordpress and may go back to it.
For anyone who wants to get information on the range of CMS programs out there, http://www.opensourcecms.com
I also recently found a interesting site showcasing CMS themes (Wordpress and others) at http://www.fresheezy.com
Ozh, you’re splitting hairs. The distinction between CMS and blogging functions is well established on the web, even if blogging is one example of how a CMS can be used.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Saturday, 8 of September , 2007 at 9:08 am
Hi Tracey
I haven’t really looked at textpattern, how did you get on, is it easy to use?
Thanks for the links too.
Comment by Tracey Grady
Made Saturday, 8 of September , 2007 at 10:29 am
I haven’t got much further than installing the files yet. It looks like it’s going to be fairly easy to use, so long as you’re comfortable building sites with CSS. I’ll let you know how I go when I get a chance to make some headway.
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Comment by Aaron :: miLienzo.com
Made Sunday, 9 of September , 2007 at 1:50 am
Interesting article Tara. For the record, I think WordPress IS a CMS, so technically Ozh is right, but we all know that WordPress is a blogging platform and what you mean by this article is that it can be used for wider applications than just blogging.
I set up a friends business site using WordPress - it is a very simple site of just 19 pages, but it is all within WordPress which gives my friend (who is not web-savvy) a really simple CMS that works brilliantly. If I had used something like Joomla I think it would have been overkill.
Comment by David Mackey
Made Sunday, 9 of September , 2007 at 5:14 am
I think WordPress is technically a CMS, as well as simple blog software. But good article. Informative.
Comment by Simonne
Made Sunday, 9 of September , 2007 at 9:37 am
This is a great article and it’s going to help me, as I also used Wordpress as a CMS for some sites. What I’ve noticed so far, is that on pages it is not possible to use active code (such as queries from a MYSQL database) - the solution I found was to create separate page templates for those sections of the site, and to put the queries there. It worked just fine.
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Comment by kat
Made Sunday, 9 of September , 2007 at 11:07 am
Excellent and very helpful post Tara. I’ve been intending on redesigning my graphic design portfolio site and I know now for sure I will be using a WP template as a CMS. My husband uses Joomla for his personal site and you are right, its a lot more complex than WP.
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Comment by Rose Sylvia
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 4:53 am
Thank goodness DoshDosh Sphunn this article. I’ve been planning to go find one on this topic and DoshDosh writes and would recommend exactly the kind of comprehensive information I seek out.
I believe that almost every site designed (or redesigned) in the future will be either based on WordPress (or possibly something very similar) or be on a store platform such as Volusion or Prostores.
Comment by Nishanthe
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 5:37 am
I think WP is a CMS by default. it has all the ingredients of a CMS. Anyways reallu cool links, specially http://autoshows.ford.com/
Comment by Sean
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 6:19 am
Cool! I didn’t even know you could do that to be honest. I mean, I had thought about don’t know enough to put it to action lol. Great article (still need to read through it all though )
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Comment by FashDesigns
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 8:44 am
This has really been a great post to read. The example sites are truly a treat to watch, and gives an idea of really now well a CMS can be used or modified. I my use WP as my CMS. The design is good part, the tough is coding your own WP theme. But then plugins do make life easy..
Comment by Japanese SEO - 海外SEO
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 9:26 am
Very useful article.
I’m a Japanese webmaster living in Japan.
Most of Japanese people are using MT as CMS, which is believed superior to WP.
But it’s good to know MT is sutable to CMS also.
Thank you for wonderful information.
Comment by David Airey
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 11:37 am
Wow! What a popular blog post Tara! Great job on piecing this together. I’ll be saving this for future reference, and thanks for the mention.
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Comment by Astone Agency
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 6:18 pm
Great article, perfect examples!
Comment by Rubab
Made Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 9:27 pm
Content management system will be only done by Wordpress in future, this is good article revealing the very fact
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Tuesday, 11 of September , 2007 at 9:20 am
Hi everyone, thanks for all the comments
Comment by Asia
Made Tuesday, 11 of September , 2007 at 8:32 pm
I just launched a website where we use Wordpress 80% for managing a 20000+ page website. www.golfadventures.com
We host the management system off-server and the front end is customized but definitely wordpress. (PHP and ModRewrite are godly)
Comment by Golf Equipment Reviews
Made Wednesday, 12 of September , 2007 at 10:42 pm
Just wanted to give this example of a review website I moved to Wordpress. Whilst it hints at its blog platform roots, I feel its modded enough to think of it as a Wordpress as a CMS site now…
Pingback by WP e-Commerce Mentioned at Instinct Entertainment
Made Thursday, 13 of September , 2007 at 1:13 am
[…] just spotted WP e-Commerce being mentioned in a UK based graphic design blog. Thanks for the […]
Comment by Shua
Made Thursday, 13 of September , 2007 at 6:05 am
Great article! Ive been meening to write one for the past year and a half about my personal experience using WP as a cms.
We have gone so far as to feed into our other properties using the WP rss engine as a content distribution outlet.
check out www.seesawnetworks.com - let me know if you have any questions.
shua
Comment by Horia
Made Friday, 14 of September , 2007 at 3:17 pm
Check this one out. Flash GUI with Wordpress backend. Crazy people 
Comment by Horia
Made Friday, 14 of September , 2007 at 3:18 pm
Forgot the link
http://www.tvwonline.net/flash/#page_id=47
Pingback by Reader Tips: 09 September 2007 | MegaBlogg Free Blog Host
Made Saturday, 15 of September , 2007 at 12:52 am
[…] Wordpress as CMS: Many people are starting to leverage the power of the Wordpress platform to create functional content management systems. This article illustrates the trend and includes examples. […]
Comment by Gailen
Made Saturday, 15 of September , 2007 at 5:25 am
Hi Tara! Very nice article. I especially like the how-to links you have assembled at the end. Thanks for sharing with us.
Comment by Ashwin
Made Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 11:33 am
Yup, I’ve used wordpress as a CMS a couple of times.
But somehow, wordpress doesnt match up to the standards of joomla or nucleus.
The obvious advantage of using wordpress as a CMS would be usability and the RSS Feed Features and the Amazing Plugins.
The Plugins are the main thing with WP.
Pingback by Themes, reklamer, videnskab og ulykke | Webmercial.dk
Made Monday, 17 of September , 2007 at 6:15 pm
[…] Wordpress om CMS […]
Comment by mlankton
Made Thursday, 20 of September , 2007 at 12:24 am
As spectacular as WP is for managing a site one to only a few people work on, it’s no substitute for one of the better CMS’s.
Pingback by Work Notes - Website Development » Blog Archive » WordPress
Made Friday, 21 of September , 2007 at 3:37 am
Pingback by jonoellis.co.uk » Friday roundup
Made Friday, 21 of September , 2007 at 1:10 pm
[…] at Typo. But so far although I like them both (especially Symphony) neither of them seem quite as flexible as […]
Comment by DESIGNEXPANSE.COM
Made Tuesday, 25 of September , 2007 at 8:42 am
Wordpress is really great. You can see my website Design Expanse (http://www.designexpanse.com) its a web design showcase accepting best webdesigns from across the globe. This is my great achievement with wordpress.
Thanks Wordpress
Pingback by grafic » stiri de la prieteni
Made Thursday, 27 of September , 2007 at 10:38 am
[…] design books si wordpress as cms de la […]
Comment by Jylan Wynne
Made Monday, 15 of October , 2007 at 8:46 am
Thanks for this useful article. I had been trying to work out how to use Wordpress as a CMS, but because I don’t know PHP very well I found that I wasn’t able to change Wordpress into a CMS.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Monday, 15 of October , 2007 at 11:30 am
no problem Jylan - I don’t know PHP either
Comment by sola solarium
Made Friday, 19 of October , 2007 at 1:09 pm
Hi! This is very interesting, i like wordpress but im more into CMS. So the key must be to understand how to design a template so i can make any design i want. I´m very satisfied with WP itself!
I´ll probably come back here and ask stupid questions regarding templating in WP then
Pingback by links for 2007-10-19 « B I T Z
Made Friday, 19 of October , 2007 at 1:18 pm
[…] Graphic Design Blog » Wordpress as a CMS - Content Management System As many of you probably know as well as being used as a blog Wordpress can also be used as a CMS or if you didn’t know here are a few examples of sites that use it. (Found via www.codex.wordpress.org). Click on any example to go to the sites. (tags: blogging web_2.0 webdesign) […]
Comment by Holly
Made Saturday, 20 of October , 2007 at 6:31 pm
Love the Weather Pops website you did - they’re great little characters, really well-designed and charming. I hope you do well out of them. Also, great tips in the article.
Comment by Make money log
Made Sunday, 21 of October , 2007 at 10:04 pm
Great article! I’m planning to creat a portal site with WP, finding a portal theme now, Your article is really helpful to me. Thanks!
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Monday, 22 of October , 2007 at 9:43 am
Thanks Holly and Make Money log
Comment by Florence
Made Thursday, 25 of October , 2007 at 12:10 am
Well compiled list of resources!
The Revolution theme caught my eye but the price turned me off –> For any readers that may be interested in the Rev. theme but don’t want to shell out a large amount of cash there is a Free Premium Theme called that draws from the same news site inspiration and takes it to a new level with some extra features in the footer and navigation.
Your article has helped set me in the right direction of adapting JWM to use as a CMS. Thanks!
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Thursday, 25 of October , 2007 at 9:44 am
Thanks for the link Florence
Comment by suresh
Made Friday, 2 of November , 2007 at 5:10 am
Word press has many addons and its easy to customize.
It has the ability to change setting for seo friendly url.
the tags option gives more indexing of the page .
So Wordpress can be used as a blog page .
Pingback by Hello Tomorrow™ blog » Blog Archive » Using WordPress as a CMS - part 1
Made Saturday, 3 of November , 2007 at 11:23 pm
[…] Graphic Design Blog » Wordpress as a CMS - Content Management System - a good article woth some more useful links […]
Comment by Suresh
Made Wednesday, 7 of November , 2007 at 5:17 am
A content site is built with the labor of three groups: writers and editors generating content, graphics designers writing templates, and programmers writing code. The previous chapters focused on giving writers and editors the features they need.
At first glance, graphics designers and programmers have requirements similar to content creators — both need version control systems for their files. This makes it tempting to expand the CMS to handle templates and source code, but there are a few reasons this is a bad idea.
Comment by Photoshop user
Made Wednesday, 7 of November , 2007 at 11:55 am
i like wordpress but im more into CMS. So the key must be to understand how to design a template so i can make any design i want. I´m very satisfied with WP itself!
Comment by Navid Safabakhsh
Made Wednesday, 7 of November , 2007 at 6:23 pm
We’ve also written a plugin that might be of help. It adds a lot of custom field and image manipulation capabilities to wordpress.
Comment by optimera hemsidan
Made Wednesday, 7 of November , 2007 at 6:34 pm
Great! I will try this tonight.
Could you make a plug that allows no sidebar (to make room for a forum) and possible of having different sidebars per page!?
Comment by Sam
Made Thursday, 8 of November , 2007 at 6:23 pm
Not actually read anything yet but has anyone had an attempt at making a custom CMS for a client before?
Comment by Web designer Fredrick
Made Friday, 16 of November , 2007 at 1:11 pm
really a useful post Tara, your experiment about wordpress as a CMS is really Excellent. This “Wordpress Sandbox Theme” sounds great in wordpress as CMS.
Pingback by WordPress For A CMS System | FabNet Revenue - Earning A Revenue From The Web
Made Tuesday, 20 of November , 2007 at 5:33 am
[…] Wordpress as a CMS from Graphic Design Blog […]
Comment by andrej
Made Saturday, 24 of November , 2007 at 11:17 am
Yes, Wordpress is a perfect CMS system and I wouldn’t use anything else. With some websites you wouldn’t even believe they are running on Wordpress.
Comment by Digital photo frame
Made Tuesday, 27 of November , 2007 at 5:49 am
A great post, learn a lot.
Even wordpress is not a CMS, but it’s easy to customize.
It has lots of plugins. With this plugin,
Wordpress can do a lot thing such as CMS. However, as a CMS, it doesnt match up to the standards of joomla or nucleus.
Comment by SEOspring
Made Tuesday, 27 of November , 2007 at 3:20 pm
Oh Tara, Mi Amore…
You’ve saved my life!! Everything that was causing my hair to fall out has been taken care of here - thank you so much!!
Comment by AR Web Consulting
Made Tuesday, 27 of November , 2007 at 9:43 pm
Great post I agree with you that the plethora of wordpress plugins are a great help and toll for building a unique and dynamic CMS based site.
Comment by Patrick
Made Saturday, 1 of December , 2007 at 1:02 am
My company uses Wordpress as a CMS for a majority of our clients who have sites on the smaller scale but for some of our larger projects we use drupal.
Pingback by links for 2007-12-02 at WOW Feed | George Dearing’s Blog Covering New Media, Marketing, and Technology
Made Sunday, 2 of December , 2007 at 5:19 am
[…] Wordpress as a CMS - Content Management System When’s Automattic (wordpress makers) gonna be bought? (tags: blogging cms content resources software web2.0 wordpress) […]
Comment by Sergio Simarro
Made Monday, 10 of December , 2007 at 7:21 pm
Hi Tara!
Really useful article. I was looking for how to do it and found your post at the right moment.
One question in case anyone can help me: I want to move an existing php site to a wordpress cms based site. The problem is that that site is alive so I cannot build it in real.
How should I proceed? Install wordpress on my local machine, build the site and, when I have it finished, is there any tool to migrate it to the real domain?
It is a site with a product catalogue (not selling it, but it have about 500 products), so I am trying to consider everything before I decide to do it.
And now I think: can I for the existing site import posts and comments to the new one. The current one has a blog with wordpress, so I would like to integrate it inside the whole site (that’s why I am also chaging to Wordpress as cms).
Thanks Tara again and all people who has responsed!
And now I also think
Pingback by Wordpress como CMS | K-Government
Made Saturday, 15 of December , 2007 at 11:03 am
[…] hablaros de las posibilidades de wordpress por que cada vez son más los ejemplos que podemos encontrarnos. En la carrera por la Casablanca Joe Biden, candidato Demócrata, y Fred […]
Pingback by WPMU and WP as CMS « Feet up, eyes closed, head back
Made Monday, 17 of December , 2007 at 5:34 am
[…] Graphic Design Blog | “Wordpress as a CMS - Content Management System” […]
Comment by ロゴ
Made Friday, 28 of December , 2007 at 10:38 am
Thanks, so much good information.
I got distracted by the Andy Roddick website link, so Ive got to finish reading another time.
Comment by Shey
Made Friday, 11 of January , 2008 at 7:14 pm
This is a seriously awesome post! I knew Wordpress was good, but now I can see so much more potential.
Thanks a bunch!
Comment by Dem
Made Friday, 11 of January , 2008 at 11:23 pm
well i’m using Wordpress as a kind of CMS. And i really like it.
Comment by Kimberley
Made Sunday, 13 of January , 2008 at 2:46 am
Great information! I’ve been working on trying to spice up my website as well as a couple websites I manage for work, and this is just the info I needed. Very well written and easy to understand. Please keep it coming!
Comment by Jonathan
Made Sunday, 20 of January , 2008 at 3:06 am
Congrats’ I did a Google Search for Graphic Design Blog and your site was no#1. I just started my own website about graphic design using Wordpress. Its from the perspective of a student learning graphic design and helping others with what I learn. I’m really impressed by all the content on this site and I’m sure lots of it is going to be helpful.
Comment by Scott
Made Sunday, 20 of January , 2008 at 4:20 am
In your article you stated
What I was really looking for though was something that would allow me to specify both a static front page and a blog page as I wanted my website to function as a website first, with a secondary blog.
Above that you mentioned that in newer versions of Wordpress you can specify a static page as a home page. The option to specify a posts page will give you a blog page without the need for a plugin. Just create a page titled Blog (or whatever you want to call it) and then enter ‘blog’ for the page slug. If your permalinks are set to %postname% then you’ll have your Blog at www.site.com/blog
I’m in the process of creating a free theme from scratch that will work well as a blog, a blog free site or both. I’ll be sure to post something here when I finish it.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Sunday, 20 of January , 2008 at 11:56 am
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the advice. By creating a “page” called blog does this still allow you to enter time and dated entries?
Comment by Shey
Made Sunday, 20 of January , 2008 at 6:14 pm
Yep, that is correct. For www.elevatedgrounds.com, I created a Blog page for the blog entries, and a Home page for the static home page. This also allows me to generate a navigation menu automatically that will include links to both these pages.
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Sunday, 20 of January , 2008 at 6:22 pm
Thanks I’ll try that next time
Comment by readywpthemes
Made Tuesday, 22 of January , 2008 at 12:49 am
Thanks for this great post Tara !!!
Comment by BOA Method
Made Wednesday, 23 of January , 2008 at 6:56 am
Yes!, I agree with what all say by all the commenters of this blog that wordpress is one best and the most easy to use in terms of environment an so on, Wordpress is more than just a cms for me its the best cms that i ever use since i start creating websites and blogs. I say this all things becuase plugins and support are very available and also esay to understood even you are not a computer savvy.
Comment by Infected By Bugs
Made Monday, 4 of February , 2008 at 4:36 pm
Man! I love all the themes that you included pictures of!
Comment by idea2d
Made Thursday, 7 of February , 2008 at 3:41 pm
Excellent drop down menu for wordpress K2 Theme. If you use it wordpress as cms it’s a good solution!
http://torokzoli.hu/2007/02/25/drop-down-menu-wordpress-k2-hoz/
Comment by vlad lauren
Made Saturday, 9 of February , 2008 at 5:54 pm
Wordpress is really great
Comment by Bodenseepeter
Made Wednesday, 27 of February , 2008 at 10:28 am
Another good example of a CMS by Wordpress ist GetAwayByBike.com.
Comment by Web Design Media
Made Thursday, 28 of February , 2008 at 11:30 am
Nice…nowadays, wordpress is almost everywhere.
Comment by Tom - Graphic Design
Made Friday, 29 of February , 2008 at 4:40 pm
I have always created CMS systems from scratch for website content and blogs etc. Looking at flexibility of design Wordpress looks like it can offer, I’m tempted to start using it!
Comment by Helena Denley
Made Wednesday, 5 of March , 2008 at 2:57 am
Hi,
Thank you so much for this amazing info.
I stayed up until 2am last night & then up early again this morning - so many ideas & possibilities running through my head - very exciting.
So far I’ve set up my mac to host wp locally & about to download a new themes from Revolution to customise for a website I had an idea about on the weekend.
It’s like all this information just fell in my lap - fabulous.
Thankyou
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Wednesday, 5 of March , 2008 at 10:16 am
HI Helena
I’m glad it helped good luck with the site
Comment by Ryan
Made Saturday, 15 of March , 2008 at 11:28 am
Hi,
Excellent article you have here.
I recently created the “Simple CMS WordPress Plugin”. It modifies the admin panel to act as a simplified CMS for basic static websites.
Comment by Lancashire Website Design
Made Monday, 17 of March , 2008 at 3:59 pm
What a fantastic article. I’ve previously wrote a similar article, (though not as in depth), and have learned an awful lot from this post.
Thanks so much - Tony
Comment by Theme Lab
Made Wednesday, 2 of April , 2008 at 10:24 pm
Great article. You can do some pretty amazing things with custom fields. Hopefully this article will put to rest some of the “doubters” of WordPress’ CMS capabilities.
Comment by Internet Marketing
Made Sunday, 6 of April , 2008 at 10:47 pm
Wordpress is a much better CMS as the most “supposed to” CMS are. It is some kind of lean, very fast installed and easy to customize. A nice side effect: wordpress is a very good system for search engine optimized sites.
Comment by Rodrigo Ferrari
Made Tuesday, 15 of April , 2008 at 3:43 am
Perfect! i love wordpress
Comment by pat609
Made Monday, 21 of April , 2008 at 4:34 pm
Nice reading!!! Keep posting.
Comment by Sanish
Made Wednesday, 23 of April , 2008 at 11:14 am
Hey,
First i would like to appreciate you for the effort that you have put up to bring all about WP in a single article. This article brings up the benefits and covers up the flexibility of WP.Well i have been using Joomla all long till now, but from now on I will try using WP too.
Well and the Weather Pops Site is just amazing!!
Comment by Web Design
Made Sunday, 4 of May , 2008 at 1:14 pm
I do wonder how Wordpress plays off against Drupal which is what every one is talking about in New Zealand.
Comment by cdisin9
Made Wednesday, 7 of May , 2008 at 12:43 am
Nice post. What CAPTCHA plugin are you using for comments submissions?
Comment by Steve
Made Tuesday, 20 of May , 2008 at 9:46 pm
Nice post Tara and thanks for answering quite a few questions I had regarding Wordpress. After reading this article a few weeks ago I made the decision to move our blog to Wordpress and I am really impressed with the extra features and the wealth of plugins available.
I would still be a little hesitant in using WP as a CMS until I have a bit more experience with it. I would, however, be interested in hearing some thoughts from developers / programmers on the use of WP as a CMS?
Thanks
Steve
Comment by Jordan Clark
Made Tuesday, 27 of May , 2008 at 3:19 am
I’ve been thinking of installing WordPress on my personal website for quite some time now — this article and some of its links has convinced me to do so.
Comment by Diana
Made Wednesday, 28 of May , 2008 at 2:49 am
Great article! I’ve been using WordPress for the last year now as a CMS. I have 2 of my own sites running on WordPress and have used it for 4 other client websites. One of them isn’t even a blog at all - just a basic informational website. The admin is user-friendly and the availability of free plugins seems endless.
Comment by Firebubble Logo and Web Design
Made Friday, 30 of May , 2008 at 10:28 am
I’ve tried using wordpress with little success for a short period of time, however I’m now keen to try again as it is such a powerful tool and flexible tool. From this article I can tell it is one of the best solutions for creating a content managed site and that you can add e-commerce functionality. I’m definitely going to look in to using it again and all the plugins available, which I was unaware of before reading this article.
Thanks a lot and keep up the good work.
Sam
Comment by Make Money Online
Made Wednesday, 4 of June , 2008 at 6:59 am
Wordpress by far is one of the most flexible platforms out there not only as a CMS but this past week I came upon a site that had made it into a full blown Wiki.
Comment by search engine optimisation
Made Wednesday, 4 of June , 2008 at 9:36 am
Fully agree with Diana, I use the software for both blogging and content managed sites, also with all the plug-ins you can attach to the software its virtually the cheapest (FreeWare)most Versatile piece of software out there.
Comment by Markus
Made Monday, 9 of June , 2008 at 12:05 pm
I used the frontpage-plugin for Wordpress when I created a free webhosting -directory.
Those examples you posted are really nice.
Comment by BUTTER
Made Tuesday, 10 of June , 2008 at 7:12 pm
wordpress has made life simpler. i see mamy examples here to lern from . anyroddick blog is a g great stuff, i am aslo trying to make some change on my blog seeing these things, thanxs mate
Comment by MB Web Design
Made Monday, 16 of June , 2008 at 2:18 am
Unfortunately, a lot of prospective clients perceive WP strictly as a tool for bloggers. This article will be added to my arguments for Wordpress as a versatile CMS. Fingers crossed the next one listens…
Comment by Mike Seaby
Made Tuesday, 17 of June , 2008 at 12:01 pm
A good alternative to the instinct e-commerce plugin is the . It’s a pay theme but it’s definately worth the money. And no, I’m not the developer!
Comment by Search Engine Sam
Made Wednesday, 18 of June , 2008 at 9:39 am
WP is such a versatile theme and can be used for so many different things, I have used it to build content managed websites and e-commerce sites and on both occasions it has worked amazing and have had no problems unlike other pieces of software around. All the themes add another dimension to the software.
But unfortunately it seems that wordpress is only seen as a blogging tool by many clients, so sometimes it can be hard to sell a website made using it.
Sam
Comment by Gilbert
Made Wednesday, 18 of June , 2008 at 12:08 pm
Hi. I’ve recently released a plugin for Wordpress called WP-CMS. Check it out at http://www.gilbertpellegrom.co.uk/wp-cms
Comment by Xbox 360 Red Ring Of Death
Made Wednesday, 18 of June , 2008 at 4:48 pm
Wordpress has such an immense future not only as a CMS but as an ecommerce wiki etc etc it has been so cool to see it grow the way it has.
Mary
Comment by Steve
Made Wednesday, 18 of June , 2008 at 9:58 pm
I cant agree more, wordpress is an excellent cms, although I found a website running on ELGG cms. Found it at http://creative-geni.us, looks pretty neat and the functionality is very similar to wordpress. Its a creative and professional social networking website. The theming looks customised and pretty cool. Gives wordpress a run for the money!
Comment by Posicionamiento web
Made Wednesday, 18 of June , 2008 at 10:37 pm
However, I think WordPress is just WordPress, though I love it so much, it’s not a born CMS.
Comment by Christina Hills
Made Wednesday, 18 of June , 2008 at 10:38 pm
Wordpress has been the solution I have been looking for to teach my students how go get a web presence and sell their products and services online!
I’m teaching this exact thing now in a small workshop,and it rocks!
-Christina Hills
“The Shopping Cart Queen”
Comment by Ann Harrell
Made Friday, 20 of June , 2008 at 8:43 pm
Great article! I am on a crusade to get a client currently using FP to convert to WP. I plan to share your article with her to support my position. Thank you for a thorough and thoughtful article.
Comment by Nicole
Made Saturday, 21 of June , 2008 at 3:10 am
Although WordPress is primarily known as a blogging tool, it is just so much more. With a few modifications, plugins and custom templates it’s possible to use WordPress as a content management system.
Comment by Tennis
Made Sunday, 22 of June , 2008 at 11:15 pm
I found your article useful. I started from today to use WP free blog, and I’m glad that they allowed TAGS which are monitored by WP not only by your blog from WP.
Comment by Dubai Web Design, Development
Made Friday, 27 of June , 2008 at 7:51 am
Thanks for putting such a nice information. This thread is helpfull guys like me
Comment by Seamless Gutters
Made Sunday, 29 of June , 2008 at 6:11 am
Thanks for the info. I have tried to use wordpress as a CMS but was not very successful. This will really help me out on one of my sites.
Comment by Vin Andella
Made Sunday, 29 of June , 2008 at 4:55 pm
WorldPress is by far the leader due to the fact search engines love their blogs.
Comment by bernie`
Made Monday, 30 of June , 2008 at 10:33 pm
Thank you for this article!! Great tips!!! Ive been thinking of using wordpress for a while now and might just do so…..
Comment by Roman
Made Thursday, 3 of July , 2008 at 1:15 pm
I doubt if wordpress can be used as a rea cms. It’s just a blogging system. I believe I can do any type of site with the CMS like Joomla! or Drupal, or DLE.
Comment by Content management system
Made Saturday, 5 of July , 2008 at 3:52 pm
Thanks for putting such a nice information. This thread is helpfull guys like me.. very nice.
Comment by Tina
Made Tuesday, 8 of July , 2008 at 11:36 am
Hey Tracy,
Good links there. Those fresheezy templates are cool.
Comment by Seguro Moto
Made Tuesday, 8 of July , 2008 at 10:34 pm
Nice article! I also use Wordpress for all my sites and once you get used to it, it becomes a great content management system. It also has a lot SEO advantages when you use a few good plugins!
Comment by buy trex helicopter
Made Thursday, 10 of July , 2008 at 12:11 am
Wordpress is one of the biggest additions to the online world I think. It has done so much for so many people. It’s ability, it’s future, it’s potential is so underestimated. WOrdpress 4 ever
Comment by Matilda
Made Thursday, 10 of July , 2008 at 5:10 am
Those are some kick but templates.
Comment by The Happy Rock
Made Thursday, 10 of July , 2008 at 5:16 am
Thanks for the inspiration. I developed a site for a small construction company client using wordpress - Wheeler Brother’s Construction.
It took almost no time at all(few hours), and a photo gallery page was just a simple plugin. I did pay $79 for a professional theme, but that is because I wanted some that fit my goals perfectly.
The client can even edit content pretty easily through the dashboard.
Comment by CMS Builder
Made Thursday, 10 of July , 2008 at 10:36 am
Hi all - just to let you know that WordCamp UK - the conference for UK WordPress users is happening on the 19th and 20th of July 2008!
You can drop by the WordCampUK Blog here, or tickets for WordCamp UK 2008 are on but tickets to WordCamp UK 2008 here - admission is by ticket only - hope to see you there!
Comment by Bingo Boy
Made Thursday, 10 of July , 2008 at 4:28 pm
I’ve been using WP on a couple of sites for several months now and absolutely love it. I’m slowly but surely transferring everything over to it - it can do the lot - including ecommerce.
Comment by Algarve Portugal
Made Thursday, 10 of July , 2008 at 8:27 pm
Thanks for this interesting information. I use wordpress also and I was super impressed with the presented templates. They almost don’t look like Wordpress, very nice designs!
Comment by Discount Code Boy
Made Saturday, 12 of July , 2008 at 11:19 pm
Great post, there are some fantastic resources that you’ve linked. P.S I’ve built some sites that use teh instinct e-commerce plugin and I can say it’s a great plugin. Another top plugin (although it’s more than just a plugin) is recruitpress - I’m using this one on a site that I’m building.
Comment by Kurt Printsmart
Made Tuesday, 15 of July , 2008 at 12:09 am
Fantastic Layouts, wordpress is great
Comment by Animated Fireworks
Made Wednesday, 16 of July , 2008 at 1:52 am
Your weather site is too cute!
Comment by cheap drum sets
Made Thursday, 24 of July , 2008 at 9:41 am
Wordpress as a CMS is great. Before I started with Wordpress, I was doing straight HTML pages, and that was okay using a WYSISYG editor, but linking pages and FTP was such a pain.
Then I disovered blogs, and the serps love them, and you can make them look like full blown websites. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
I love wordpress!
Comment by Hund
Made Wednesday, 30 of July , 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi!
I have been using Joomla for a long time and really miss the good Blogg functionallity that is available at Wordpress. If Wordpress will develop more CMS functionality I will surely try this out.
At the moment I use Joomla as a CMS and Wordpress as a blog, but this may change
Best regards,
Hund
Comment by BigBoss
Made Thursday, 31 of July , 2008 at 3:28 am
Thanks for this valuable information..this thread really helpful.
I agree that wordpress is the best for CMC.
Thanks !!
Comment by Lee
Made Thursday, 31 of July , 2008 at 3:29 pm
There is a good version of Wordpress that allows you to manage many sites at once, it’s called Wordpress Multiuser. It’s still not a full blown CMS, but makes wordpres more flexible and easier for having many sites.
I think Wordpress is very flexible and not over complicated. Its great for certain needs and is easy to use. But for a real CMS you may need something more.
Comment by Passion
Made Saturday, 2 of August , 2008 at 11:58 am
Very nicy article ..wordpress is very nice CMC
Long live WP/..
Comment by las vegas windshield repair
Made Wednesday, 6 of August , 2008 at 3:41 pm
cool article. Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to figure out this stuff. Very helpful. Thank you.
Kiel
Comment by Mark
Made Wednesday, 6 of August , 2008 at 7:31 pm
We use Wordpress as a CMS for all our client site and our new website which should be finished mid August 2008 utlises many of the features of Wordpress that make it a great content management system. The most notable feature is the use of custom fields in order to display extra information associated with each post/page.
Two plugins that we find very helpful are the “More Fields” plugin and the Admin Management Extended plugin.
Wordpress truely is a terrific web publishing platform.
Comment by Google Massacre
Made Thursday, 7 of August , 2008 at 1:29 pm
I love Wordpress but the one thing that does drive e crazy is I finish upgrading my site and in few days another upgrade is available it kind of worries me of the security in the soft.
Comment by kolli
Made Monday, 18 of August , 2008 at 7:24 pm
Great post – the best thing about WordPress is the extensibility not only with plugins and themes.
If you add a functions.php page to your theme you can add your own functions to use in themes. And you can always change themes after you have applied theme – the is_home() conditional tag is very useful if you want to change you home page.
Comment by xbox 360 red ring of death
Made Tuesday, 19 of August , 2008 at 3:54 pm
I use blogger blogs - Which was one of the biggest mistakes I have made when starting out. I really want to switch to wordpress, but wordpress seems a little more complicated to me, Im not much of a tech guy. Do you have any suggestions?
Comment by Tara: Freelance Designer
Made Tuesday, 19 of August , 2008 at 4:23 pm
Comment by xbox 360 red ring of death
Made Wednesday, 20 of August , 2008 at 4:09 pm
Thanks Tara. I really appreciate you take in the time to explain it to me.
Comment by Internet Marketing Blog
Made Saturday, 23 of August , 2008 at 2:28 am
I absolutely LOVE Wordpress, it has really enabled me to create some great websites and have a solution for my ‘novice’ clients who want to be able to post,but not mess up the website. I have dabbled in other CMS’ and nothing comes close to this beauty.
Comment by Misty Cryer-Davidson
Made Sunday, 24 of August , 2008 at 9:22 pm
Thank you for providing this article on using Wordpress as a CMS. I haven’t used it yet, but I’ve been thinking about it. Excellent information…
Comment by Mike Johnston
Made Tuesday, 26 of August , 2008 at 11:18 am
I agree that wordpress is a great alternative for a CMS platform. I’ve been considering offering it to some clients of mine as well.
Comment by Lagos Portugal
Made Tuesday, 26 of August , 2008 at 12:41 pm
I have been using wordpress for a few months now, but sometimes it is a pain to update the version! For the rest it is a great system and I will stick with it for sure!
Thanks for the static front page trick!
Comment by buy metal detector
Made Friday, 29 of August , 2008 at 8:45 am
I too like wordpress as a CMS, but I do have a challenge with the upgrades. Thanks for the static page tip though!
Been thinking about Drupal, but I think that is even more involved no?
Tiff
Comment by Voos Baratos
Made Sunday, 31 of August , 2008 at 4:14 pm
Very nice examples, they really show the full power of wordpress! I love the layouts of the sites!
Comment by How to build muscle
Made Sunday, 31 of August , 2008 at 7:22 pm
I never tried the other CMS software because I fell in love with wordpress, so I just made all of my CMS based off of Wordpress. I did a few test installs of the others and hated them!
Comment by Bodybuilding Supplement Reviews
Made Sunday, 31 of August , 2008 at 7:31 pm
Wordpress is the greatest Blogging and CMS software period. Anything like a review site or directory you can use wordpress if you modify it enough. This article covered many things, great article!
Comment by Bryan - After5PC.net
Made Tuesday, 2 of September , 2008 at 6:59 am
I’m trying to play around with Wordpress as a CMS now. I’ve seen several sites you’d never know was based on WP, unless you look at the source code. I think it’s a great idea.
So far, I’ve just used it for blogs, but may use it for full sites soon (once I get to learn more).
Comment by Aswathy
Made Friday, 5 of September , 2008 at 12:53 pm
Thanks for these excellent examples. No doubt that WP would rule for long.
Comment by Money Help
Made Sunday, 7 of September , 2008 at 4:49 pm
Wordpress works great as a CMS. Most people don’t use it to its fullest capabilities because they just don’t understand it that well. The more you learn about it, the more you’ll be impressed by its features.
Comment by Steve
Made Friday, 12 of September , 2008 at 7:41 pm
I love the way wordpress is so SEO friendly, its the perfect platform for any website. The only exception for a good all round CMS would be CMS Made Simple which is worth a look.
Comment by open source CMS
Made Thursday, 18 of September , 2008 at 11:48 am
Hey, Nice and informative post.wordpress is user friendly.
Comment by handan
Made Tuesday, 23 of September , 2008 at 8:31 am
Wordpress works great as a CMS. Most people don’t use it to its fullest capabilities because they just don’t understand it that well. The more you learn about it, the more you’ll be impressed by its features.
Comment by Trent
Made Tuesday, 14 of October , 2008 at 3:20 am
I absolutely love Wordpress as a CMS. It’s easy to use, highly functional, and search engines seem to love it. Until recently I’ve mostly only used it for fairly basic blogs but now I am getting more into its full capabilities.
Comment by Hawaii Car Hire
Made Tuesday, 14 of October , 2008 at 2:45 pm
Hello there!
I never talk that he could make such good looking websites with WordPress! It really does not look like a blog, it looks like a full-blown website, very stylish and Web 2.0! Would also be easy to have a contact form on the website?
I’m really considering trying out the WordPress platform for my own website but it looks hard to install and I am not that computer savvy! Thanks for the informative article and I will look further into WordPress!
Best regards,
Comment by John
Made Friday, 17 of October , 2008 at 11:05 am
You have no idea how much time you have saved of mine.
Thanks a lot for this amazing article, actually im a web designer , and i was addicted to Joomla for my clients. Now surely ill move to Wordpress as a brilliant CMS.
Comment by Jon
Made Monday, 20 of October , 2008 at 8:29 am
I love WP and all the plug-ins that are available. Plus you can get quite a lot of support at the different forums …. BEST of all, its free.
Comment by Andrew
Made Monday, 20 of October , 2008 at 6:36 pm
This is really great how wordpress have become so good as a powerful CMS.
Most of my websites are running smoothly on wordpress.
Comment by Rob
Made Tuesday, 21 of October , 2008 at 11:51 am
Wordpress is very simple to use yet powerful tool but I tend to lean towards ‘Joomla!’ for something a bit more powerful and versatile.
Comment by Brad - Office Supplies
Made Tuesday, 21 of October , 2008 at 7:22 pm
With all the functionality that plug-ins offer, Wordpress can just about be anything you want it to be. I’ve used it for e-commerce sites, membership sites, etc. My biggest complaint in regards to Wordpress is the security vulnerabilities.
Although I haven’t tried it yet, I know quite a few people are big fans of Drupal for content management. I tried Joomla, but found it too complicated. After using Wordpress, Joomla looked like rocket science.
Comment by Nicole
Made Wednesday, 22 of October , 2008 at 1:21 am
This thread’s been interesting. Seems like people are generally looking for something that is not rocket science, but also provides a lot of flexibility for customization without a bunch of coding and back end implementation. So many designers had to resort to Wordpress and tweak it to become a cms solution because there was not a perfect solution out there (only cumbersome CMS website solutions). There are so many great solutions that are filling this gap – we’ll see it evolving over time and more designers may divert away from Wordpress and solutions that need a lot of integration or coding. (Discalimer: I work at Sitemasher)
Comment by Paul
Made Sunday, 26 of October , 2008 at 12:24 pm
I love WP for CMS, esp as its free. If you have some imagination, you can do a great site with the plugins.
Comment by Stupid Drunk
Made Thursday, 30 of October , 2008 at 12:23 am
This is some good information, I just took a look at the WPG2 plug-in, and I have been looking for something like this for my photo gallery on my site, I installed coppermine on my wp blog, but I dont think I like it, I am going to give the WPG2 photo gallery plug-in a try.
Comment by Amy
Made Saturday, 1 of November , 2008 at 3:08 pm
Thanks for the great information and links. These have helped a lot! I have only used Wordpress as an actual website (only pages), not a blog. And, I love it! There is so much you can do. With some of the info you have given, though, I am going to incorporate a blog into one of my websites.
Comment by Nate
Made Saturday, 1 of November , 2008 at 8:08 pm
Wow that andy roddick wordpress is very nice. Just perfect for my niche
Comment by bilete de avion
Made Friday, 14 of November , 2008 at 12:47 pm
WP is the best, I use it for all my blogs, it’s easy to install and manage your content
Comment by Security Certifications
Made Monday, 17 of November , 2008 at 3:07 am
The flexibility of WP constantly amazes me
Comment by Mike
Made Thursday, 27 of November , 2008 at 2:43 pm
Wordpress is the best CMS around. its simpler than others like drupal and joomla
Comment by nvxiao
Made Sunday, 30 of November , 2008 at 3:23 pm
Thanks for these excellent examples. No doubt that WP would rule for long.
Comment by Charlotte
Made Tuesday, 2 of December , 2008 at 1:13 pm
Wordpress is a great piece of blogging software, I also use Joomla but still appreciate Wordpress as a very easy to use but powerful alternative.
Comment by Denise
Made Monday, 8 of December , 2008 at 12:07 am
I have bookmarked this page for future reference. My daughter and I were just talking about setting up a store. I know nothing about doing this and she only knows how to set up a blog.
Would this be a hard thing to do for two total newbies?
Comment by Andrew
Made Thursday, 11 of December , 2008 at 10:29 am
I love wordpress as a CMS. When starting out, you have pluggins and templates available for free. Once you get upto speed with WP, you can get custom designs at great prices.
Comment by nvxiao
Made Saturday, 13 of December , 2008 at 4:38 pm
Thankyou
Comment by John Stew
Made Friday, 26 of December , 2008 at 7:30 pm
This is amazing, how wordpress can be used for so many various purposes, as web designer i personally really like wordpress a lot, my next target is to make a new wordpress e-commerce theme and utilize full wordpress possibilities.
Comment by John
Made Friday, 26 of December , 2008 at 7:34 pm
Thanks for this great article, im sure im going to use wordpress on my next website.
Comment by vetweb
Made Saturday, 27 of December , 2008 at 11:27 am
what a great article.
i’ve been uninstalled my wordpress site to joomla just to have a web store. today, i will have my full access to hack my wordpress site
thank you
Comment by creative182002
Made Monday, 29 of December , 2008 at 7:10 am
Thanx a lot for sharing such a useful information with us. I am a blogging freak and I like to make new up dation in the theme of my word press blog. I think your post will help me a lot in creating enhanced and efficient themes
Comment by Donny
Made Saturday, 3 of January , 2009 at 6:14 am
Very nice article! This is what i’m looking for.. Thank you so much!
Comment by Vehicles Graphics
Made Monday, 5 of January , 2009 at 9:42 am
In response to stop computer freezing, wordpress is a piece of blogging software but is easily expanded as shown
Comment by Ian
Made Sunday, 18 of January , 2009 at 10:21 am
I love wordpress ….. Its to CMS now as the fax machine was to business in the 90’s
Comment by Авто фото
Made Wednesday, 21 of January , 2009 at 6:46 am
Well, nice comparison. Good news is that this CMS is becoming so popular, that developers don’t stop to develop it.
Comment by Kiribu
Made Wednesday, 21 of January , 2009 at 11:00 pm
Yes, wordpress can be hacked into a CMS, but at the end of the day, it’s a blog beast. I guess all the widgets and add-on stuff beef it up into something substantial and it is a great platform.
But if you’re going to make static pages with a horizontal nav bar etc, why not just go with one of the open-source CMS’s dedicated to doing it better:
SilverstripeTypolightConcrete5They’re so easy to template and have their own ample supply of widgets. If you’re a designer / developer, you owe it to your paying clients.
Comment by New Method
Made Thursday, 22 of January , 2009 at 9:18 am
It is amazing just how many websites out there are now using Wordpress as a content management system! With Wordpress 2.7 recently being released it has definitely come on strides. I think one of the main features of most of the content management systems at the moment is the ability to use plugins - they expand an already great piece of software into a truly unique application suitable for many uses.
Comment by Safe Man
Made Friday, 23 of January , 2009 at 9:47 pm
Think that wordpress is one of a kind and free to tops.
Comment by Zyva
Made Tuesday, 27 of January , 2009 at 8:51 am
Yes, wordpress is also very good for Content Management System (CMS). It’s very easy, simple, usable, and modifiable. Much of themes for this purpose also available.
Comment by Best
Made Wednesday, 28 of January , 2009 at 6:39 am
Very informative post for me. Thank you for sharing this.
Comment by DS
Made Sunday, 1 of February , 2009 at 5:36 pm
I love wordpress. I have had a few custom templates made and they have realy topped off the site. Need to try the others when I get a few minutes!
Comment by Technology Talks
Made Monday, 2 of February , 2009 at 11:50 am
The individual toilsome I presuppose with Wordpress is that sound is a resource hog. The hunt for your SQL database takes is amazing. Ive been using WP whereas
a few years considering further
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has nonplussed destitute fresh
than a few times with wearisome
traffic - losing its database connection. I yet
figured extraneous what valid was adjacent searching through hours sway deviating WP-related forums.
Comment by Gift box
Made Wednesday, 4 of February , 2009 at 9:19 pm
I dont use wordpress. but my friends use it to make blog.not very bad.
Comment by TT
Made Tuesday, 10 of February , 2009 at 5:04 pm
There is very little you get for free, esp at the moment. Wordpress is one of the great freebies. A great cm product and tones of plugins to top it. 10/10 for WP
Comment by Mawe
Made Saturday, 14 of February , 2009 at 6:51 pm
This article pretty much covers everything that I needed to know about setting-up WP as a CMS. A lot of my friends are also looking for ways to turn their blogs into a functional CMS, and this will definitely rock their socks off. Thank you very much!
Comment by Lewis Bilsland
Made Wednesday, 18 of February , 2009 at 6:01 pm
I recently created my blog to plugin into my site using wordpress, recreating my site as a theme was easy and i’m now thinking of using wordpress as a cms for my site, there are so many plugins available to adapt wordpress into a powerfull cms.
Comment by EinbauLeuchten
Made Friday, 20 of February , 2009 at 7:54 pm
Use it as CMS 5 years allready.